Vice Principals Co-Creator Jody Hill Has No Problem Making You Feel Uncomfortable

Jody Hill might not be as famous as his frequent collaborator Danny McBride, but with their HBO series Eastbound & Down and now Vice Principals, the writer/director has established a very particular brand of outsized, over-the-top outrageous comedy. The North Carolina native met McBride and partner David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple Express) while at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and the trio's latest venture is a kindred beast to their prior Eastbound, focusing on two white southern high school vice principals—McBride's angry, quick-tempered Neal Gamby, and Walton Goggins' evil, dandyish Lee Russell—who form an unlikely alliance in order to sabotage their new African-American boss, Dr. Belinda Brown (Kimberley Hebert Gregory).

Given that scenario's racial dynamics, Vice Principals has come under fire in certain quarters for being insensitive. However, according to Hill, such criticisms invariably fail to take into account where the show—which will end after its two already-produced seasons are over—is ultimately headed. Speaking to Esquire, Hill discussed that controversy, as well as the benefits of TV versus film, and the reason he's so drawn to telling stories about the South.

HBO

With either Eastbound & Down or Vice Principals, has HBO ever told you that you've gone too far?

I would say 99.9% of the time, no. There were one or two times they said something early on with Eastbound. There was one episode in the first season that we'd written and we showed it to them, and it was basically Kenny running into these devil worshipers and they try to rape Clegg (played by Ben Best), and stuff like that. [Laughs]. It was basically Danny bringing the devil worshippers to church and killing one of them on the altar because he thought it was the right thing to do. I remember they read that the first season and…they didn't freak out, but they were just like, okay, this might not be all right. But after the first season, I'll be honest, there hasn't been a lot of stuff that's come up.

When it debuted, Vice Principals took some flak from critics for its premise about two white men trying to undermine an African-American female superior. When you were shooting, did you think it might inspire such a response? And how do you feel about it now?

Well, I don't know. I know how the show goes over all eighteen episodes. I'm not trying to say that there's some big plot point—I don't even really want to get into that. But these critics are going to see these characters differently. And it's fine if the jury is still out, or if you give impressions based off what you've seen. But some of it just seems like an extremely quick judgment. It's almost like they were waiting for something to happen, or some reason to say it.

It's kind of crazy, because as the show goes on—and I think you're starting to see that now—people don't see these guys as two-dimensional. Kimberly said it really well. She was like 'Why do you have a problem with this? You're the one who pointed it out."

But I have to say, we thought about it a little bit—people are going to think this is some dumb premise just to get you in. And that's the thing: It kind of is. That's kind of what we like about it. It looks like the old Hollywood thing, and then I just don't think anyone is going to feel the same after it's over. You may hate it still, but I don't think you'll feel like any of that shit they were talking.

Having the room to slowly develop characters over an extended period of time—is that one of the biggest benefits of long-form TV versus film?

Exactly. That is one of the great things about TV, and that's why we like it so much. There are a lot of longer movies from the '70s that we were a fan of growing up in film school—Danny, me and David [Gordon Green, one of the show's producers and frequent directors]. We wanted to make those types of movies, and we found that the best place to make those kinds of movies was in TV.

I like it when characters are dark and complicated. I just think it's a weird approach to talk about art as if the person always has to be a good person. If you don't like it, fine. But I just don't think it's fair to say that we have this responsibility to teach some lesson.

I like it when characters are dark and complicated. I just think it's a weird approach to talk about art as if the person always has to be a good person.

Vice Principals walks a fine line between realism and cartoonishness. Do you frequently discuss that balance?

Yeah, we do talk about that a lot. We structure everything, and think of these shows as dramas. What frustrates me a little bit sometimes is that there are a lot of stricter criteria to comedy. Meaning, there are more rules—people are expecting this, or there aren't enough jokes, or whatever. We always approach this just like a drama, and then we put jokes in; we just try to write things that are funny. So if it's a funny set-up, we'll try to write it seriously. We're constantly trying to be like, okay, how do we dial this back, or push it forward. And it is a fine line.

HBO

Vice Principals began as feature-film screenplay, and after Eastbound, you decided to return to it and turn it into a TV series. What was it about the project that suggested it'd be a better fit on the small screen?

Danny and I wrote the first draft right after Sundance back in 2006, and it was just because we wanted to work together again and do a follow-up to The Foot Fist Way. We liked it, it was fun, there was cool stuff in it, but it's kind of like what we were talking about earlier, with the longer formats. [On TV] you can do more stuff, you can follow different characters, and go down different tangents, and just learn about these people. For us, it just felt like, in 90 pages or whatever it, you didn't get as much of that stuff as you wanted to. The show has been cool, because we get to actually spend a lot of personal time with each character, and I think that's more in line with our sensibilities. Something just didn't feel right in the shorter format.

You shot all eighteen episodes at once in Charleston, South Carolina. Was taking on such an enormous endeavor daunting?

I directed eight of the nine episodes in the first season, and Danny directed one – he's made his directing debut this year with Episode Three, "The Field Trip". And David directed eight of the nine on [the second season]. Luckily, we had a great crew around. Those guys are my friends since college. We work with a lot of our college buddies and old friends, so it wasn't so bad, because we have a really good crew around. But it's a big undertaking. Shooting for, gosh, almost a year down there. It was cool, it was pretty massive.

Like Eastbound, the show is set in the South, where you're from. What is it about the region that you find so appealing?

You kind of always feel like rednecks when you are in a big city and you come from the South. And really, Danny and me and David are the furthest things from rednecks [Laughs]. But I do think that, coming from a place that doesn't get represented in movies a lot…a lot of it is writing what you know, probably.

I don't feel like we consider ourselves voices of the South, or anything like that. I'm not trying to speak for anybody. But southern characters have never been taken seriously. They're always the bucktoothed guy. It's like the one group of people that's totally okay to hate on in this country [Laughs]. I think we at least wanted to show that area for how we saw it, and what was funny about what we saw. It seemed like it's something that wasn't being portrayed the correct way. It's not just people rolling around in the mud and working on farms and stuff like that. It's people taking karate in strip malls, and going to high school like everywhere else—they just have accents.

The South's not just people rolling around in the mud and working on farms and stuff like that. It's people taking karate in strip malls, and going to high school like everywhere else—they just have accents.

Especially given the two shows' similarities, did you feel any pressure to live up to Eastbound with Vice Principals?

There's always pressure. I don't know if we directly related it to Eastbound, in terms of feeling we had to make this good because of Eastbound. We did want to make sure it was different from Eastbound, and we wanted to make sure that [in contrast with] Kenny Powers, we wanted to give [Gamby] the school to care about, something bigger than himself. Also, with the addition of Walton Goggins, it's more of a two-hander.

HBO

Walton Goggins is such an equally formidable presence opposite Danny. How did you settle on him for the part?

He actually auditioned for us on the third season of Eastbound, for the Jason Sudeikis part. We were huge fans of Sudeikis, and we were thinking we were going to go with Sudeikis the whole time. But when we saw Walton, we were like, "Wow, who is this dude?" It was crazy, it was a different take than everybody else in there. So when we were doing this one, his name came up, and Danny spoke with him originally, and he was telling me about the voice that Walton just started doing on the phone, and he was really psyched. So the first time I met Walton, he slipped into that voice and it was immediately everything Danny had said it was. It was perfect. He just truly got that character.

You know, Walton is from the South, and I think he gets it, and has seen people like this before. He is just the best actor. He is one of these guys that just inhabits the role, but not in some fake actorly way —he can literally walk around and talk like this guy, and it's just amazing how he can do anything, and can react to anything, and never break character.

HBO convinced you and Danny to return to Eastbound for a fourth season, after you'd said the show was over. Is that why you shot both seasons of Vice Principals at once—to avoid being convinced, later on, to continue it?

With Eastbound, we were going to do three seasons, but Katy Mixon [who played Danny McBride's wife April] wasn't able to join us for the third season—she joined us for two episodes, but we couldn't really do an arc with that. And then it turned out that HBO wanted us to come back, and we were like, we're not coming back. But then they said they'd get us Katy Mixon, and we thought, "Okay, that's a chance to end this show the way we wanted to. So let's do it." I'm glad we came back for that.

We are fans of the British Office and BBC shows, and we thought it would be cool to end the show with the story complete. I always hate it when you're watching a show and you're a fan of it, and inevitably, you sort of start to dislike it over time, because they're reaching and trying to keep going, and you can tell that they're just doing everything they can to have some filler to hit the 100 episodes. We didn't want to do that. I'd like to have that money, don't get me wrong [Laughs]. But I don't know…it just seems kind of lame.

Can you tell me anything else about where Vice Principals might be headed?

I think that everybody, when they first see this, probably thinks they know where it's going to go. But the whole thing, all eighteen episodes, goes to really crazy places – there's lots of heartfelt stuff, there's lots of dark stuff. But I don't think you're going to be able to predict where it's going to go. So I'll just say, if you like what you see, there's plenty more of that.

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